Motherwell in Symphony

Today’s Guest blogger is an on-line acquaintance of mine. She’s my go to plant identifier and I love her photography on Instragram as we share many of the same interests except she’s also big into birds. Now that she sent me her

Balance Challenges

I’ve blogged lots about balance as it  relates to mental challenges. I’ve blogged about cancer and mental health. I’ve never blogged about

Recharging

True story. Balance within all aspects of life is so essential but fragile. Daily choices. Big picture items and the little details. 

Bernie 

Grasslands National Park

I am extremely excited to bring you the first GUEST BLOG POST about our National Parks. For me it’s like a triple win; a Saskatchewan park, the wide open prairies (my spiritual space) and written by an inspiring young woman who is a mover and a shaker. Someone I am lucky enough to call my friend and who, with only a tiny bit of encouragement dove into writing about her Parks Canada experience.

Life’s like a …

The sunlight dappled through the raspberry patch and while it was a beautiful colour it added a level of complexity to berry picking. The evening tinged light made the ripe berries hard to distinguish.  

She thought maybe life’s like a raspberry patch and not a box of chocolates. Chocolates are so pedestrian;  mass produced and if you read the key there aren’t even any surprises. It’s all so uniform and easy and she thought that’s not like life at all. Life isn’t easy. Those chocolates are tasty but they lack the smell, feel and taste of victory.  Because each bowl of raspberries is a little victory on so many levels and that’s much more like real life is.

No there was much more to it than walking out and picking the big juicy berries on the top. She thought of all the background work that most people don’t ever consider as they eat that berry. How all that time and those little decisions ripple along and collide with the factors we can’t control. The best maintained berry patch can be levelled by a hail storm so intense that there is nothing left but beat up old canes. The new strapping plants growing so pristinely for next year are desecrated.  

That’s what life is like she thought. Hail could so be a metaphor for a crisis like a car accident that claims a young life and cripples someone in their grief. Raspberry blight was like that bloody cancer. The one that robs young, old and in betweens of the life they wanted to live. Instead it replaces it with something they never dreamt could happen to them. Cane rot requires the whole patch be burnt and relocated which she reflected, was what those who had lost their relationships or their jobs were often forced to do. 
Better to live through a drought, she thought, even though that had its downsides as well. Less berries with a lower quality and perhaps there was some lesson to be learnt there as well. That smaller bowl was worthy of the same respect as the big juicy bowl full of prime berries. That analogy seemed to elude her grasp and yet sat in front of her face but the metaphor wasn’t jumping up at her.  Ps late at night these two thoughts intruded: racism and or white privilege. 

Pulling her mind back to the picking of the berries she mulled over that the work of keeping raspberries. The mulching, weeding, cutting back of the floricane at the year end so that the primocane could flourish the following year and the disposal of the canes. Those maintenance items were like seeing brushing your teeth, eating properly, getting enough sleep and stretching. Those self care items that people neglect on themselves but will take care of for others or as it turns out for plants.  Perhaps the bees were sent along to help like friends do in real life. 

But if the care of them was like self care she rationalized then the use of the berries was like the sweet things in life. Preserving the berries for a cold winters day or eating them fresh with farm cream was hugs and laughter all around. And if life handed you little raspberries then make lemonade. Now that was an analogy she could get behind; that some times difficult situations force us to respond to find the best possible outcome. Yes life definitely was like that. 

Bernie 

Perhaps I’ve been spending too much time alone in the raspberry patch! 

Canada 150 Series Continues in Style

Stay tuned for more Parks Canada Red Chairs!! I’m so excited to have a spot to showcase the

Conquest

This was like a multilevel Conquest. The concept floated around for years, The planning took a few months and the day itself had several different tangents attached to Conquest.

It was a road trip to uncharted but

Little Voice

I’m pretty good at ignoring the little voice in my head. As a caregiver I’m quite typical in that I usually put myself last. Obviously when you combine those two factors self-neglect happens. 

#MyCanadaDay150

Wow! I actually am unsure of how to encapsulate our Canada Day 150 spent on Parliament Hill. There are so many moments and thoughts to share. Settle in as this is going to be a long read!

Whole Hearted

The concept for this blog post came from three random “encounters” so I feel the need to give the backgrounds to lay the ground work.